


Last Time

by FridaysAt9



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s11e10 My Struggle IV, Pregnancy, The Unremarkable House (X-Files)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:35:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28171779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FridaysAt9/pseuds/FridaysAt9
Summary: Believing Jackson is dead, Scully tries to reconcile the truths about his conception with the experience of her new pregnancy. Mulder is desperate to know what he missed the last time, while he soaks up every moment of the miracle unfolding before him.
Relationships: Fox Mulder & Dana Scully, Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 6
Kudos: 61
Collections: X-Files Secret Santa Fanfic Exchange (2020)





	Last Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kyouryokusenshi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyouryokusenshi/gifts).



> For the X-Files Secret Santa Exchange 2020. 
> 
> My prompt from Kyouryokusenshi was:   
> Anything post MSIV, I'm not seeing enough pregnancy fic out there these days. Can be angst or fluff or both. Your choice. Feel free to include William/Jackson if you'd like. How are Mulder & Scully navigating life and the pregnancy after the series? OR maybe a missing scenes story where Scully finds out she's pregnant and her process before telling Mulder.
> 
> I have no idea if this is what you were hoping for, but when I sat down to write, it just poured out. I think needed to rationalize some of Scully's statements in My Struggle IV. Warning, it's a little angsty, but I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Thanks to Erosanderis for the beta!

_“Scully, he was our son!”  
“No. William was an experiment, Mulder.”  
”What are you talking about?”  
“Mulder… He was an idea. Born in a laboratory.”  
“But you were his mother.”  
“No, I… I carried him. And I bore him. But I was never a mother to him.”_

~~~~

The days following that night were hard, to say the least. Monica was gone. Skinner was alive, but would likely have a very different life moving forward. In a heartbeat, everything had changed. Everything they had believed and held on to was gone. Shattered. 

Until so recently, they had been able to believe that their son was out in the world somewhere, living a normal life, safe and happy, with a family who loved and protected him. Despite what Scully had witnessed when he was a baby, when he was hers, she could fool herself into believing that he was a child like any other, without special abilities. A child who was not planned with nefarious intentions, or hunted like a prized animal. 

That night on the dock had been full of emotions, knowing her son was in danger, while holding within her the secret of a new life. Scully didn’t know what to think, or what to believe. Learning that Mulder was not William’s father felt like a truth that she had always suspected, but had never allowed herself to believe. 

True, the timing of the pregnancy had been possible, but her medical history, and the failure of the IVF had made it feel completely impossible. Her faith, and Mulder’s words, had allowed her to accept it as a miracle. She was desperate to be a mother, while also desperately in love with Mulder. Maybe God had finally granted them everything she had always dreamed of. Maybe after their struggles and pain, her cancer, and their lost family members… Maybe it was their turn to have something good. Somehow, they were given a child.

But that night, when Mulder had told her that William… Jackson, was gone, that he had been shot, something inside her had switched. She couldn’t allow herself to feel the pain anymore, and even more than that, she felt a visceral need to protect Mulder, to make him understand that Jackson was never meant to be theirs. That they would move on, past this, and that they could, and amazingly would, be parents again. 

If she had allowed herself, she would have crumbled to the ground, right there on that dock, mourning the loss of the child she had never been able to know, but for all of them, she had to stay strong, shove it down, and keep them together. 

The rest of that night was a blur. She wasn’t sure how she got back to the house, but she had awoken the next morning wearing one of Mulder’s T-shirts, and quickly ran to the bathroom to throw up. Less than 12 hours before, she had lost the teenage son with whom she had hoped to reconnect, and now there she was, 54 years old, and hunched over a toilet with a bout of morning sickness. 

“Hey,” Mulder’s voice came from the doorway. “You okay?”

Scully took a deep breath, wiped her mouth with a tissue, and turned to look at him. He was leaning against the doorframe like he had so many times when they had lived there together. His face was wrinkled in concern but also something else. Confusion. After all the times he had taken care of her in the past, she could tell he had no idea what to do in that moment. He was frozen in place, sexy, stoic, but also scared. 

She gave him a smile, silently telling him she was okay and that he was welcome to walk further into the room. Mulder came to sit next to her on the floor, and smoothed back the hair that was stuck to the side of her face. She was overwhelmed by how far they’d come.

“I’m fine,” she told him. 

He gave her the look that she had expected, one that said he hated that phrase and didn’t believe her for a second.

“I’m not ready to talk about it,” she said. “Last night. I just can’t right now.”

Mulder nodded, and pulled her in for a hug. His hand tentatively slid down her side until it snaked under the shirt she was wearing, landing on her belly, still flat, even though something amazing was happening beneath. 

“When?” he asked simply. 

“About a week ago,” she said, snuggling closer to his chest. “I started feeling nauseous and I thought it was because of my back pain from falling down that elevator shaft, but when my back felt better, I was still getting sick. I don’t know why I even took a test. Old habits die hard, I guess.”

Mulder nodded, likely remembering all the times in the past when she had been hopeful, only to receive a negative test. 

“Why didn’t you say something?”

Scully paused, thinking about the past weeks and months when she was learning to trust Mulder again. They were starting new, in a way, and she was still weighing her thoughts, deciding which she wanted to share and which ones she wanted to keep to herself. 

“It just felt so unreal.”

As the weeks went on, and her belly began to grow, it became much harder to deny what was happening to her. Their feelings were still a mix of disbelief, joy, and worry, but there were more and more moments when they were able to relish in the fact that they had been given a second chance to be parents, regardless of how late in life that opportunity had found them. 

Scully had started to think of her hips as magnets that pulled Mulder’s hands towards them whenever he was near. He couldn’t get enough of her changing body, mapping every curve with his palms and at night, his lips. Touching her every chance he got. 

It was amazing to her how quickly they had fallen back into step once she had moved back into the house. They found their old routines and at times, felt like they picked up where they had left off. They were still learning to navigate the changes to their careers, driving together to Quantico most days, meeting up for lunch, and driving back home together, but it all felt so domestic, so normal. Someone looking in from the outside would never suspect all the things they had gone through. On the surface, they were a typical happy couple.

Well, mostly typical. Scully had noticed the glances she had started to get now that her shape was changing. She felt like she looked good for her age, but she wasn’t going to fool anyone into believing she was an expecting mother in her twenties or thirties. She tried not to let it get to her, knowing she would likely have many more of these looks and conversations down the road as they raised their child, but the stares from strangers never failed to remind her how unique their situation was.

As they raised their child… hers and Mulder’s, this time for sure. This time Mulder was here with her, and she could pinpoint the day this baby had been conceived. This time around, she wasn’t in fear of the syndicate, experiments, being found, or of her child being taken. This time she could place Mulder’s hand on her belly and watch his face as he felt his child kick. This time, they could do this together.

Mulder approached her pregnancy with the same curiosity he poured into all parts of his life. He was constantly asking, “was it like this last time?” Every time she heard the question, she was forced to face the jumble of thoughts and emotions she was carrying within her. They still hadn’t talked about Jackson since that night on the dock, but as her belly grew, her ability to believe that he hadn’t been hers, and that Mulder wasn’t his father had begun to falter. 

“It was like this last time,” she told him as they watched the baby squirm under her skin. She told him as she woke up in the middle of the night, unable to find a comfortable position. She told him when she sat on the couch eating an entire bag of salt and vinegar potato chips.

It felt just like it had when she was pregnant with William. She could feel the love for her child, the connection to the person she was creating, and beyond that, an overwhelming love for Mulder, the man who had made it possible. Feeling this baby, and going through all the stages of pregnancy that she had experienced before, Scully could no longer separate herself from Jackson the way she had on that dock. She had been shielding herself by believing that what Skinner had told her was true. She had pushed her pain aside to focus on a new life, not as a replacement for her son, but as a new leaf to turn in this renewed relationship between her and Mulder. 

But seven months on, her belief was failing. 

“Do you ever think of him,” Mulder asked, reading her thoughts like he had always been able to do. They were in bed together, Mulder her big spoon, with his large hands tracing lazy patterns across the skin of her round belly. 

“Hmm?” she hummed, wanting to make sure he was really asking to talk about their son.

“Jackson,” he said quietly, close to her ear. The gravelly tone of his voice created goosebumps across her body. 

She paused for a moment, not sure what to say. She had always been good at keeping her feelings inside, but was much less adept at letting them out. 

“Yes,” she answered, and was surprised to hear the quiver in her voice. “Every day.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

When Scully spoke, her voice was small. “I wanted this time to be different. For once, after everything we’ve been through, I wanted what other people have. For both of us, but especially for you.”

She rolled over to face him, a difficult task that, once complete, left her belly pressed comfortably against his. “You missed so much.”

Mulder swept some hair behind her ear and smiled. “I know I keep asking, but was it like this last time?”

“No,” she admitted. “I was alone then. I buried you. I mourned you. It was nothing like this.”

Mulder gave her a small squeeze, before she continued. “While I was pregnant, I was planning a life as a single mother, and then you came back, and I allowed myself to think maybe we would be able to be a family.”

“But that’s not what happened,” he said, finishing her thought.

“But that’s not what happened.”

They stayed like that, silently thinking, independently while together. Mulder’s eyes were closed and his breathing had evened out, but she needed to get something off her chest before he slept.

“Mulder, I don’t believe what Skinner told me. What Spender said to him,” she said. Mulder opened his eyes and stared deep into her own. “I know William was different. He could do things that weren’t… I hate to say normal... typical. But in my heart, I believe he was ours. Yours and mine, a piece of each of us.”

She paused, but Mulder didn’t say anything. His eyes were glassy, searching her face, silently asking her to continue. 

“I don’t know how it was possible,” she said, “how I was able to get pregnant, how he could do what he was able to do, but I remember how I felt then, and I know how I feel now. He was ours.”

Mulder lifted his hand from her hip and dragged it across the scruff on his face that she suspected he kept because he knew she liked it. 

“But there’s no way for us to know,” he said through a clenched jaw. 

Scully took his hand from his face, squeezed it in her own, and gave him a small smirk. “And how many things in our time together have we known for sure?”

Mulder smiled, pulled her hand towards him, and kissed her knuckles. 

“I feel him sometimes,” Scully whispered. “I think. I have dreams of a little girl walking hand in hand with a dark haired teenager.”

“Scully,” Mulder said with an awed inhale. 

“It could be nothing,” she said, not wanting to allow herself to believe. “Wishful thinking.”

“They never found a body,” Mulder said, placing his hand on her belly, on top of the squirming baby. “Maybe there’s hope.”

That night Scully dreamt of a family of four, eating a picnic in a field. A mother and father, son and daughter. She dreamed of holidays, and movie nights, and snow globes from all the places they had travelled.


End file.
